We have been given a great opportunity – under the historic Affordable Care Act – to create the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

The ultimate goal of the Innovation Center is to explore new approaches to the way we pay for and deliver care to patients so that we have better results both in terms of the quality of care and the affordability of coverage. Congress has charged this new CMS Center with identifying, testing and ultimately spreading new ways of delivering care and new ways of paying for care.

This is an enormous, challenging and exciting opportunity. But, we cannot do it alone. The Innovation Center will work with a diverse group of stakeholders including patient advocates, hospitals, doctors, consumers, employers, states, and other federal agencies to get the best ideas and put them to work.

We want to work with you to better understand your needs.

Introducing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation

The Innovation Center is different from what CMS has done before. The Innovation Center will rigorously and rapidly assess the progress of its programs and work with caregivers, insurers, and employers to replicate successful innovations in communities across the country.

The initial work of the Center will focus on three areas:

Better Care for People: Improving care for patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors’ offices, and developing ways to make care safer, more patient-centered, more efficient, more effective, more timely, and more equitable.

Coordinating Care to Improve Health Outcomes for Patients: Developing new models that make it easier for doctors and nurses and other caregivers to work together to care for a patient.

Community Care Models: Exploring steps to improve public health and make communities healthier and stronger by fighting the epidemics of obesity, smoking, and heart disease.

Introducing innovations.cms.gov

Along with the Innovation Center, CMS is introducing a new Web site today – innovations.cms.gov. This website will:

Enable anyone who wants to help to join us on this endeavor.

Broadly share knowledge.

Work with integrated, interdisciplinary teams from all sectors and all backgrounds.

The Web site is the first step toward building a platform for collaboration and information sharing as we develop new care and payment models. Over the upcoming months, we will build out the capabilities of this site, so please check back frequently, subscribe to our blog, or subscribe to receive email updates.

None of this will be easy. Government cannot and should not do this alone. That’s why we are working with leaders in the private sector to come up with the best answers to the problems that face us all.

We hope that you will join us, too. What I ask for is your partnership and your input. I would like to help forge an unprecedented level of shared aim, shared vision, and synergy in action among the public and private stewards and leaders of health care.